Mai Tais and Murder Read online

  Well then, I just won’t get caught.

  I backed out of the driveway and parked at the opening of the cul-de-sac, hoping that none of the neighbors had taken the opportunity to look out their windows and see me. It seemed like the sort of neighborhood that had a neighborhood watch, and I didn’t need pesky neighbors coming to investigate, or worse, calling the cops.

  “This is for Grace,” I told myself firmly when I started to lose my nerve. She would do the same for me, in a heartbeat, so I could damn well do the same.

  Double-checking the gloves I’d brought with me, I slipped out of the car and closed the door behind me as quietly as I could. I looked around for anyone taking out their garbage or venturing from their houses to pick up the object of a sudden craving or a late-night snack or even teenagers sneaking out to fuck their boyfriends or girlfriends, but saw no one. The cul-de-sac seemed eerily quiet and devoid of life.

  With blood pounding in my ears and my breath so ragged I feared I might pass out, I made my way up the driveway to the wide porch of Carrie’s house. I lifted the welcome mat but found nothing under it but dirt and a few ants. I felt around at the upper portion of the doorframe and also came up with nothing. I was hoping there would be a spare key somewhere—that way I could argue I didn’t actually break and enter, only enter.

  How else could I get into the house? Breaking down a door or a window would cause a lot of noise and risk disturbing her neighbors. It didn’t help that I didn’t know if I could break down a door; I’d never tried it before. It looked extremely painful, and I didn’t much care to inflict pain on myself.

  Maybe there would be an open window somewhere.

  The sudden glow of headlights made me jump, and I turned around, just knowing I’d been caught, but they belonged to a car driving past the cul-de-sac. I doubted the driver had seen me, and even if he or she did, there was no way to know I didn’t belong here.

  Neighbors, though, they would know.

  Feeling too exposed on the front porch, I started toward the side of the house. Near the front door was a garage, the door broken, like it had been knocked off its track and could not close all the way. The opening was wide enough that I could squeeze through, probably.

  Was I really about to break into someone’s house? I’d never even come close to breaking the law before, unless you counted speeding or accidentally taking gum from a grocery store when I was three—which my grandfather promptly made me go back and return, saying he was disappointed in me for taking it.

  It’s not like I’m breaking in to steal something—at least not for my own benefit, I reasoned. I’m here to help out Grace.

  I got down on the ground face-first, the concrete of the driveway biting uncomfortably into my hands even through the gloves. Hoping I hadn’t overestimated the opening, I crawled forward on my elbows, gritting my teeth against the discomfort.

  The bottom of the door scraped against my shoulders, but I cleared the space without any real problems. I didn’t want to look at my shirt and see the stains the door must have left behind; I just hoped they would come out. I really liked that shirt. Then again, that was my fault for wearing clothes I like to break into a house. I chalked it up to inexperience.

  The garage was basically empty, save for a few piled up boxes, a rusty metal shelf with a few odds and ends for a car, and a lawnmower pushed into the corner. Not surprising; I doubted Carrie had much time or interest in the sorts of projects or hobbies people usually did in their garages.

  I made my way to the garage entrance to the house. I tried the doorknob, not expecting anything to happen, and damn near fell into the house when the door swung inward.

  Luck must be on my side tonight, I thought as I regained my balance. The thought was immediately followed by another: I hope she doesn’t have an alarm system activated. No noise sounded as I made my way cautiously into the kitchen, and my worry abated some.

  I used my phone screen to provide light, not wanting to risk the brightness of the flashlight or draw attention to the house. It would do. The kitchen looked fresh and updated—all of the appliances shiny silver, the countertops marble. An island stood in the middle with a built-in sink. I didn’t think I would find anything of much use in there, so I made my way toward the next room.

  The refrigerator caught my eye, and I could not help but stop. Magnets and pictures covered the silver surface—family portraits, Christmas cards featuring a woman who must be Carrie’s sister, her husband, and two adorable children. There were coloring book pages torn out and added to the milieu, done by her niece or nephew, no doubt. The picture that kept drawing my eye was one taken at a beach. Carrie smiled out at me, clutching a surfboard beneath her arm. Her hair fell in wet tangles around her face. For a moment, my mind summoned the image of her lying on the floor, lifeless, bloody hair matted to her cheeks much like it was in the picture, and I had to look away.

  A death like Carrie’s would do that, sneak in and spoil the memories that were there, poisoning the past of the victim in the minds of those affected. If I could see one good thing in all of this, it was that Carrie’s family didn’t discover her. They might learn the details of what happened, but they would never see it, so the sight could not spoil their memory.

  Get your head out of the clouds, Maxfield, I told myself firmly, stepping away from the refrigerator and its look into Carrie’s life. You’re here to help Grace. Nothing can be done for Carrie now.

  The house was a single story, and the kitchen had two doorways. One opened out into the dining room, which itself led into the living room. The other, which I neared, joined a hallway leading away from the living room and toward the back of the house. The door directly across from me opened up into a nice bathroom, though I didn’t stay to admire Carrie’s decorating talent.

  My stomach in knots, I walked slowly down the hall. Part of me still couldn’t believe I was actually doing this, while another part did its level best to not think about it in order to maintain some level of control, otherwise I would curl up into a ball and have a panic attack, most likely.

  The first door I came to was originally a guest bedroom in the layout, but Carrie had turned it into an office. It was a replica of her office at Paradise Investigations, I noticed; the layout was exactly the same, but with much nicer furniture. The wood looked to be expensive, the bookshelves one solid piece, not one of those assemble and slide in the shelves types.

  The first thing I did was make note of the window on the wall. I needed to be careful to not shine the light in that direction or get too close to it, lest someone see me moving around inside and call the cops. The neighbors were bound to know about Carrie’s death by now—it was in the papers, and I’d bet it made the news, too.

  I started on the bookshelf directly across from the door, though it didn’t seem promising. Quite a few technical manuals lined the shelves—I noted two guides to getting a private investigator’s license in Hawaii, for instance—and books on a few other topics that didn’t seem likely to shine a light on anything. The middle shelf had the fewest books, held in the center by bookends on either end. A small vase with obviously fake roses sat in one corner, while an old jewelry box sat on the other.

  I moved to her desk next. The surface of it was immaculate, not a thing out of place. A Mac desktop computer sat there, turned off. Ignoring the computer, I tried each of the drawers. The top drawer contained paper clips, various writing utensils, a letter opener, and other stationery items. The second drawer, the bigger of the desk’s two, didn’t budge when I pulled. It had a lock.

  I dug around the drawer above it in search of a key but found nothing. Figuring Carrie would be smarter than that, I started searching the second bookshelf behind me and came up empty again. Where the hell could the key be? She wouldn’t take the key with her, would she, and risk losing it somewhere?

  If it were me, I would put it somewhere I could access it when I needed to, but not risk misplacing. If the items inside were important, though, I wo
uld also put it somewhere a thief might not immediately look to find it.

  I went back to the farther bookshelf and looked around it once more. After several frustrated minutes, my eyes fell on the jewelry box again. I took it from the shelf, placing my phone down in a way that the light would still illuminate the contents of the box when I opened it. The jewelry box was nothing special, a simple, oval shaped thing, the silver of it tarnished with age.

  Inside I found a few odds and ends, and there—at the bottom beneath mostly useless things—was a small key, about the right size for a desk drawer. I scurried back to the desk. Anticipation had my hands shaking so badly that I missed the keyhole not once, not twice, but three times before I managed to slide it in home and give it a twist to the left.

  I cautiously tugged at the desk drawer and it slid open. I bit my lip to hold back a cry of triumph as I peered inside. The inside was stacked high with papers, most of them bound and separated by manila envelopes. I dug them out, placing them on the desk and pawing through them. They were meticulously labeled—Paradise Investigations Bookkeeping 2013, 2014, 2015, and so on.

  Just financial paperwork? I couldn’t imagine how that would be any good to me. I highly doubted someone killed Carrie to get access to past bookkeeping records. I went through the envelopes one more time, dropping them into the desk drawer as I skimmed their label.

  I almost didn’t catch it—in fact, I only noticed because I happened to glance at the envelope one more time as I went to drop in the next one. Just like the other envelopes, this one was labeled Paradise Investigations Bookkeeping, but the year was for next year.

  How could Carrie have access to bookkeeping for the future? It didn’t make any sense. I tossed the others aside and picked the envelope up once more. This time I noticed the unusual shape at the bottom.

  I lifted the brads holding the envelope closed and slid the contents out into my hand. Inside the envelope was a folder, the exterior labeled simply DELGADO. The strange shape at the bottom was from a film container, the sort of film that professionals used, the kind requiring a darkroom to develop.

  This could be it, I realized. This envelope could contain everything I needed to get Grace out of jail. This might make the police drop their case against her so they could start looking for the real killer.

  I couldn’t wait to see Grace walk free, and I couldn’t wait to see Benet’s face when he saw how wrong he was and who it was that proved it.

  Chapter Six

  The return trip to my condo passed in a blur; I had no distinct memory of the time between leaving Carrie’s house and walking back through my front door. It was probably a miracle I was alive. Thoughts raced through my head, the primary among them the desire to scour the documents now in my possession. I couldn’t do anything with the film, since I had no clue how to go about developing it, but the police could handle that.

  I turned on the lamp beside my couch and propped my feet up on my coffee table. With bated breath, I opened the envelope once more and slid the folder out, shaking the envelope until the film roll fell into my hand. I tossed the roll onto the coffee table, grunting in annoyance when it fell off and rolled to a stop in front of the entertainment center sporting my television. Whatever; I would pick it up later.

  I focused all of my attention on the folder marked Delgado. That in and of itself was the first clue, I figured. Delgado sounded like a name to me—though first or last, I didn’t know—which meant I had another suspect to put a name to, and that would go a long way to clearing Grace.

  “No, Gabe,” I told myself aloud, “don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Right now, it’s just a name.” The last thing I wanted to do was move too quickly or make a mistake that could ruin my chances of helping Grace—or get me thrown in jail along with her.

  Thinking of jail forced me to reflect uneasily on how I’d acquired this information. Would it even be admissible? Did the whole fruit of the forbidden tree thing apply just to the cops acquiring it, or would the fact I stole it make it useless? The question made me wish I was still working for a big law firm, so I could look through the law books and find some sort of precedent. But did the police have to know I’d stolen the material? I could always tell them I found it some other legal way.

  Which would be perjury. Which could lead to jail time itself. Hawaii just kept getting better and better. Grace and I were going to have a long talk about this when I finally got her out.

  I opened the folder and found myself facing page after page of handwritten notes. They looked to be in shorthand of some sort, and from the get-go, I could barely make out anything. The handwriting was slanted and full of loops and ornamentations that were absolutely unnecessary, and I wondered if Carrie always wrote like that or if she did it purposefully to conceal what she’d written, a sort of code of her own. If that were the case then whatever this was must have been really important—at least, I hoped it was, or it was back to square one.

  I sat there for a little over an hour, staring at the indecipherable notes, praying that looking at the notes long enough would make the lines and squiggles make sense. That’s how it worked in movies and on TV, after all: staring at the code long enough made something suddenly pop out and the entire puzzle fell together in fifteen seconds, flat. I had no such luck, though.

  I leaned back with a groan, my neck twinging painfully. The notes were useless to me. I tossed them onto the coffee table and glanced at my phone, vision momentarily swimming. It was a quarter past midnight. It wouldn’t hurt to take a break and get a shower, since I was making no headway anyway.

  Left hand applying pressure to the crick in my neck, I shuffled tiredly back to my bedroom and started the shower running. I went to my dresser and dug out a fresh pair of underwear—boxer briefs, I liked the support when underwear hugged my body—and started back for the shower.

  I’m not sure what made me stop, but as I passed the bedroom doorway, I paused. I heard a noise, a series of clicking, like metal pushing against metal. I strained my ears, trying to figure out where it came from when I heard the unmistakable sound of a doorknob turning.

  But the front door is locked. I frowned, trying to make sense of what I was hearing. Was I hearing the neighbors coming home? I’d never been able to hear them twist their doorknob before—it made no sense now.

  I stood there listening, thinking I’d just imagined the noise when a shadow moved across the floor of my living room. My blood turned to ice water in my veins. No doubt about it; there was someone in my house.

  My throat felt tight and constricted and I struggled to breathe. Slowly, I stepped forward, hoping to keep my bare feet from making noise on the hardwood floor. My heart thundered so loudly in my chest I was certain that whoever was inside could hear it. I cleared the small hallway in time to see a man, roughly six feet, clothed in all black with a ski mask pulled down over his face—despite the obscurity, I could see that he was white—standing in the middle of my living room, just in front of my couch.

  The man clutched the files from Carrie’s house in his hands.

  There was no way in hell I was going to let someone take those, not after I worked so damn hard to get them in the first place. I’d broken into someone’s house for those, for Christ’s sake!

  Instinct took over then. I rushed the man, despite the fact that he probably outweighed me by forty or fifty pounds. The only advantage I had was that he didn’t notice me until I was basically on him. I jumped the last distance, knocking him backward. He maintained his balance, though, and immediately shoved me away. The back of my legs hit the coffee table, and I tripped, falling hard on my ass.

  The intruder didn’t concern himself with me after that; he made his way toward the door. I climbed to my feet and lunged, catching him around the middle and slamming him into the wall near the front door, hands scrambling for the papers in his hand.

  The intruder’s elbow slammed into the middle of my back, sending fire running through my nerve endings. My grip on his w
aist loosened. He maneuvered us around, using his body to ram me hard into the wall. The sound of my head slamming against it reverberated in my skull, and I released him, feeling dazed.

  Before I could recover, the intruder slammed his fist into my gut, causing me to double over. For several agonizing moments, I thought I was going to throw up. I gritted my teeth against the pain and lunged forward, catching the man around the knees. He fell to the ground. I rolled to the side as he kicked out, striking the air where I had just been. His grip loosened on the file and I took my opportunity, jerking it from his grasp.

  Now what? I had the papers, but the man’s fallen body blocked my access to the front door, the only exit I had other than the small, enclosed veranda in my bedroom. I ran toward my bedroom, hearing the intruder getting to his feet behind me and swearing in a gruff voice.

  I pushed my bedroom door closed, but before I could get it to click shut, the intruder’s burly body slammed into it. It flew open, the edge of it striking me in the forehead. My vision swam for the second time that night and I stumbled back, falling into a pile of empty boxes that, at that moment, I really regretted not cleaning up. The rough edges of the cardboard dragged across the skin on my back and arms, and I would not be surprised if at least a few of the scratches drew blood.

  The intruder stalked over to me, menace radiating from him in almost palpable waves. With every step he took, I could see my inevitable death approaching and knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  That didn’t mean I was giving up without a fight.

  I kicked out at the intruder as he stood over me, but my position gave my legs no strength; I might as well have been a toddler striking him. The man leaned forward, harsh blue eyes boring deep into mine. His left hand moved, grabbing my right wrist and jerking it around painfully until I dropped the papers. As he picked them up with his left hand, his right reached out, aiming right for my neck.